V Cast Music Reviewed

James Quintana Pearce

Jan. 21, 2006 - 1:01 PM PDT
Jan. 21, 2006 - 1:01 PM PDT

LAPTOP Magazine has reviewed Verizon’s Vcast music service, with the results fairly mixed. “Overall, Verizon Wireless’ V CAST Music service has a few annoying glitches, but it improves on Sprint’s Music Store by being cheaper and easier to use. People are unlikely to ditch their iPods for this version, but for those looking for a phone/music combo, Verizon offers a good place to start.”
Over-the-air download of songs took 35-45 seconds, but then the handset had to spend another 20 seconds getting the license for the song — which is either a very big license or the verifiation process takes a while…either way it could be annoying.
The main complaints in the review were about the handset software. “It’s frustrating that you can pull up a list of all the songs in your library during playback, but not select one. Instead, you’re forced to keep tapping the Fast-Forward button until you find the track you want. That’s a lot of button presses if you have dozens or hundreds of tunes on your phone. You can create playlists on the phone to make sure your favorite tracks are all lumped together…We encountered a bug when using the general Search option; the engine couldn’t recognize spaces in artist or track names. (Verizon is aware of the issue and is working on a solution).”
There was also a complaint about EV-DO, in that you could lose the signal moving from one side of the room to another.
All in all, the review seemed pleased with the service but noted some definite areas for improvement.